Who Is Tim Cook?

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook is stepping in again for Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who announced Monday morning that he was going on medical leave. Here a quick refresher on Mr. Cook’s career.

Tim Cook

Mr. Jobs, following his return to the company in 1997, hired Mr. Cook in 1998 to oversee the manufacturing of Apple’s computers. Before that, the Alabama native, who majored in industrial engineering at Auburn University and earned a master’s in business administration at Duke University, had worked in operations at Compaq Computer Corp.

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Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook

At Apple, Mr. Cook shed bloated inventories and whipped the company’s supply chain into shape. He rose to become the No. 2 executive at Apple under Mr. Jobs. Beginning in August 2004, Mr. Cook ran Apple for two months while Mr. Jobs recuperated from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas.

Mr. Jobs later gave Mr. Cook responsibility for Apple’s world-wide sales and its Macintosh computer division. In 2005, he was appointed chief operating officer. In 2009, he stepped in for Mr. Jobs again; Mr. Jobs went on medical leave for the first half of the year and and had a liver transplant.

Mr. Cook ran day-to-day operations during Mr. Jobs’s absence and was praised for his ability to make Apple’s sprawling operations move on time. He has established himself as the CEO-in-waiting since his stint taking over for Mr. Jobs.

Several people who do business with Apple say their dealings with the company during Mr. Jobs’s 2009 leave remained unchanged and that products continue to be developed and released on schedule.

For 2010, Mr. Cook took in a salary of $800,000 in 2010 along with a $5 million bonus and $52.3 million of stock awards. His total compensation was slightly more than $59 million.

More recently, investors have expressed concerns that Mr. Cook might be lured to a competitor. In recent years, Mr. Cook has been the target of overtures from other technology giants in the past: Motorola Inc. tried to hire Mr. Cook while Dell Inc. wooed the executive, according to people familiar with the situation.